Overcoming an Existential Business Threat

Linhart PR recommended and implemented a proactive integrated reputation recovery communications strategy to regain control of the narrative, fight back against attacks and preserve key customer relationships. Key activities included:

• Direct outreach to retail customers. The team crafted letters, emails and talking points for the company’s senior leaders to share with key retailer accounts, pushing back against activist allegations, providing the facts and putting USDA regulatory agreements in context.
• Proactive targeted media relations. Beginning at the Natural Products Expo East trade show, Linhart PR sought interview opportunities for the company’s leaders with national, trade and local journalists willing to consider both sides of the story, and also placed an op-ed in a major daily newspaper telling “the rest of a dairy’s story.”
• Issues advertising. Linhart PR developed and placed paid advertising in supermarket trade publications, tackling the issues and allegations head-on, telling the animal care and sustainability story and reaching retail dairy category decision-makers with the facts.
• Organic stewardship report. To counter distortions in the activist group’s “organic dairy scorecard” and demonstrate a commitment to transparency, Linhart PR developed a detailed annual stewardship report for the producer, with facts and metrics on ownership structure, location and size of dairy farms, animal care and production protocols and organic certifications and certifiers, among other things. The report went beyond the activist group scorecard and was circulated to customers, reporters and other stakeholders.
• ESG initiatives. As part of the reputation recovery plan, the company began to identify and implement sustainability and community partnership initiatives, including creation of a company foundation; funding of a center for organic dairy research, with a major land-grant university; support for FFA and 4-H chapters; and partnerships  with local food banks.

‍